Marie Alphonse Nicolas Joseph Jongen (14 December 1873 – 12 July 1953) was a Belgian organist, composer, and music educator. Jongen was born in Liège, where his parents had moved from Flanders. He was the elder brother of Léon Jongen. On the strength of his precocity for music, he was admitted to the Liège Conservatoire at the young age of seven, and spent the next sixteen years there. Jongen studied composition with Jean-Théodore Radoux. In 1892 he was awarded the gilt medal in the piano competition, and later that same year he joined the organ class of Charles-Marie Danneels. He won a First Prize for Fugue in 1895, an honors diploma in piano the next year, and another for organ in 1896.[1]
Jongen has been composing since the age of 13, and by the time he published his opus 1 - the Concerto Symphonique (1892) - he already had dozens of works to his credit. His opus 3, the monumental and massive First String Quartet, was composed in 1894 and was submitted for the annual competition for fine arts held by the Royal Academy of Belgium, where it was awarded the top prize by the jury.[1]
In 1897, he won the Belgian Prix de Rome, which allowed him to travel to Italy, Germany and France over a four year period, during which (among many others) he encountered Richard Strauss, Vincent D'Indy and Florent Schmitt.[1] In 1902 he returned to Belgium and in 1903 he was named a professor of harmony and counterpoint at his old Liège college. With the outbreak of World War I, he and his family moved to England, where he founded a piano quartet with violinist Désiré Defauw, violist Lionel Tertis, and cellist Émile Doehaerd.[2][3] His String Quartet No 2, op. 50, was composed there in 1916.[4] When peace returned, he came back to Belgium and was named professor of fugue at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. From 1925 until 1939, he served as director of that institution; he was succeeded by his brother Léon Jongen.